


'apocalypse' is a strong word.

by judypoovey



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood Magic, Dark Comedy, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen, M/M, Sitcom Level Humor I'm so sorry, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-01-12 07:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18441950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judypoovey/pseuds/judypoovey
Summary: No, of course Thoros didn't intentionally bring a hot stranger back from the dead. But, well, it happened. And now he's got to deal with the consequences of his actions, which is a brand new thing for him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i love impulse writing a fic that i have no idea if i will ever finish. i shouldn't, but goddammit beric/thoros is my forever ship and i've tried to do modern AU zombie beric before i failed but this time i will succeed. please presume i'm basing a lot of dynamics and appearances off of show canon because paul kaye is perfect and i fucking love him, richard dormer and rory mccann so much. follow me @rhllors on tumblr.

“I screwed up big time, Melisandre,” he said when his coworker finally returned from her lunch break.

She looked entirely unbothered by this, setting down her knitting project and not even looking at him before she responded. “Thoros, given your daily life experiences, you’re going to have to be more specific.”

It was harsh but she was right. When he didn’t enumerate immediately she went back to her knitting, waiting for a call.

“I think I brought someone back from the dead,” he said.

Knitting needles hit the table and her red-eyed gaze flickered up to him, her eyebrows raised. “That is not funny,” she admonished.

This is an appropriate moment in the story to take it back and explain a few things.

Thoros was presently working for a psychic hotline, with Melisandre. Both of them were in some form or fashion, possessing the abilities that made a psychic hotline a fairly sensible career choice. He couldn’t speak for her, but his abilities had been innate since birth. A sort of odd pull of intuition. When he’d left Myr for Westeros, he had started as a street magician, doing tarot readings for pocket change.

Somehow that had leveraged into a gig as a late-night television psychic, which had earned a decent paycheck, but a wee bit of the good old substance abuse had blown all the good will he had earned with the network.

Hence, he became a phone psychic. Just to pass the hours.

Which leads into the events that brought Thoros and his coworker to staring down at a corpse on their office couch.

“I was getting lunch.”

“You mean drunk.”

He ignored it, even though she was right. “I was walking back to the office and he was dead in an alley,” he continued. “And maybe I had a flashback to college and remembered that book we weren’t supposed to read and –”

“Performed a deeply frowned upon ritual that no one believed even worked to bring back the dead on a strange man you found in an alley,” she said. “Because you just felt like it?”

“Well, because he’s very attractive?”

“That’s worse,” she said.

The man in question was lying on the couch, his expensive looking button-up shirt stained with blood, looking very much like a corpse as they watched him, save for the faintest rise and fall of his chest.

“And you’re sure he was dead and we’re not just staring at a very injured man we could be taking to the hospital?” she asked, voicing the more reasonable explanation of the events of today.

“I did check that first, you know.”

“Before you kissed him.”

“That is the ritual, yes.”

Maybe wandering about kissing corpses wasn’t the most normal way to spend the afternoon, but he hadn’t actually expected it to work. In the old world, it was more of a funeral rite than anything people took seriously. He had intended to call the cops and just leave it, but…well.

Melisandre was like ninety percent of his impulse control.

“I swear to R'hllor if you started a fucking zombie apocalypse...”

“Apocalypse is a strong word, Mel.” They both paused to consider that, though. What would happen if this turned into some sort of horror scenario. He'd really fucked this one up, hadn't he? “So what do I do?” he asked.

“Should we tell Kinvara?” she asked, slowly and deliberately. 

“Fuck no,” he said. “I don’t even know if it worked for real, he’s been out like this since it happened. What if he’s just comatose forever?” That couldn’t be better than dead.

“Kill him again?”

“Strangely doesn’t feel like the least ethical thing I’ve done toda –”

The corpse on the couch woke up with a loud shout.

Both of them jumped back, yelling in response.

“What in the fuck is going on?!” he shouted.

Thoros released the death grip he had on Melisandre’s shoulder and took another step forward, crouching down in front of their new zombie friend. “Hold still.”

He complied, though the mistrust was plain on his face. He was a bit younger than Thoros, with red hair, blue eyes, and a pale complexion that Thoros was inclined to blame on the traumatic blood loss. The ghost of a black eye marred his face, which was exactly as attractive as he’d thought it was when he found him face down in the dirt.

Holding up a finger, he made like the doctors he saw on television and moved it in front of his eyes. His eyes followed.

“Are you breathing?” Melisandre asked, leaning down. Both of them were overcrowding their new friend, who looked more annoyed and defiant than overwhelmed.

“Why wouldn’t I be breathing?” he replied, voice a little haughty.

“You were dead thirty minutes ago, mate,” Thoros replied. “Maybe we should start over.” He stuck out his hand to shake. “I’m Thoros. This is Melisandre. What’s your name?”

“Beric Dondarrion.”

Well that was a mouthful. “Okay, Beric, look. You got stabbed to death in an alley. I accidentally brought you back from the dead. Now you’re here.”

“Where is here?”

“Our office. We run a psychic hotline.”

In spite of himself, Beric Dondarrion burst out laughing. “This is fucking stupid.”

“Do you remember this afternoon at all?”

Beric’s laughter died right there and he contemplated that question for far too long. “I was getting lunch at a pub, I left, and I think I got mugged,” he said, not sounding sure.

“And then stabbed to death I guess,” he said.

This finally prompted Beric to look down at his ruined shirt. If he could have gotten any paler, in that moment, he probably did. “What the f –”

“Beric, I know you probably hear this a lot but can you please take off your shirt for me?”  

Melisandre covered up her laugh with a cough as he unbuttoned the shirt and discarded it. It would have been inappropriate and entirely unprofessional to focus on the fact that he clearly worked out. The four stab wounds along his right side did nothing to diminish his overall appearance of a well-kept man.

“What the fuck is going on?” he repeated, more under his breath than anything.

“I found you dead in an alley on my lunch break. I didn’t mean to bring you back, it’s really just a funeral ritual from Essos. But you started breathing again…”

“What does this ritual entail?” he asked.

Thoros contemplated lying. He was a perfectly adept liar. It was how he got through almost all of his life up to this point, and there was really no reason to start being honest with random hot strangers now, he never had in the past. “It involves some words,” he said, feeling his voice go weirdly high.

“And some mouth to mouth contact,” Melisandre cut in, completely overriding his attempt at preserving whatever dignity he pretended he had.

Beric frowned. “You kissed a random dead body in an alley?”

“I’ve done worse in an alley?” he offered with a shrug.

“So what do we do now?” Beric asked, and the three of them looked at each other in silence, no one really having an answer to that.


	2. Chapter 2

“He can’t stay here,” Melisandre said after sending Beric off to the shower to at least clean the open wounds off so he could pass for a real boy for a while. “But we should keep him close. We don’t know what the consequences of this could be.”

“You think he’s gonna develop a craving for brains and infect people?” he deadpanned back, smoking his fifth cigarette of the hour.

“I _don’t_ know. That’s what’s worrying.” It was quite rare for Melisandre to ever admit she didn’t know something, so that was spooky.

“If Kinvara finds out, he’ll get turned into some kind of exhibit or a lab experiment,” he cautioned, knowing that Melisandre’s tendency to be a total suck-up to their overlords could get them in a lot of trouble in this situation.

Really no scenario was going to keep them out of trouble.

“Here would be better,” he added. “No one ever visits you; you’d never have to explain his presence to anyone.”

“How does that count your house out? You never explain anything to anyone anyway,” she said.

“You know how Clegane is. I’ll get found out in a second.”

“Just make up a story, you do it all the time. I don’t want a random stranger living in my house.” That was a fair point.

“There’s also the matter of him probably having a place to live,” he said. “I doubt he can just break his lease and –”

“I actually don’t have a place to live,” Beric said from the doorway, toweling off his hair. “I was in the city looking for an apartment. I got a job offer and I was moving from down south,” he said. “And you shouldn’t talk about people like they aren’t in the room listening.”

Thoros threw a t-shirt at him, bearing their hotline number in a bright pink font. “Please dress before you address me.”

“You are really uptight for a guy who was getting hammered on his lunch break,” Beric said, then he looked confused at that detail, as if he hadn’t really remembered it before it came out of his mouth. “Right, that’s it. You were at the same pub as me before this happened. You didn’t mug and stab me, did you?”

“Nah. It was Gregor. He’s like that.”

“Is everyone in King’s Landing that cavalier about murder or just the psychics?”

“Probably everyone at this point, realistically,” he said, shrugging. “Nothing to do about Clegane. He’s a cunt.” Then he sighed. “I guess you can live at my condo,” he said. “Gonna be cramped. But…whatever. It’s fine. What was this job you got?”

“Right, I’m a detective. I’m working with Ned Stark’s new major crimes unit,” he said. “Or I was supposed to? I’m not sure how this works.”

“Have you already gotten your physical for that job?” he asked, only assuming most cops had to get physicals to be considered for duty. He probably saw that on TV.

“Oh yeah, everything’s all in order. Just gotta report for duty in two weeks.”

“Then I guess you could just go about your normal life. Unless you start craving human flesh. That’d be a problem. But if you feel normal enough…I don’t see why we can’t just pretend this never happened.” That’s what Thoros wanted; to pretend he didn’t somehow accidentally reveal to himself that the personal fluke of his existence was more powerful than he’d initially expected. He didn’t want to have to develop personal ambition or something terrible like that. He was capable of nothing and therefore never disappointed anyone except Melisandre. She was used to it.

“Except I live with some random guy I’ve never met until now.”

“Hey, people do that all the time in the city. Rent ain’t cheap.”

Not that he paid rent on the condo he owned, nor did his “roommate” ever pay him rent either.

“I guess you lost your wallet in this whole…ordeal,” he said.

“I should probably cancel my credit cards,” Beric agreed. “I guess it’s good I can do that online so no one has to look at me.” He looked down at himself again, frowning.

“You can’t even tell your dead, it’s totally…” That was the stupidest line of reassurance he’d ever uttered, so he just stopped himself midsentence.  “I need a drink,” he said, stomping over to the mini-fridge in the phone room and pulling out his emergency rum. He didn’t bother pouring it into a glass, he just took a swallow straight from the bottle, and then passed it to Beric. “Want a little?”

“I guess,” he said, taking it and copying Thoros’s movements. He flinched as it was going down, though, a sign of inexperience.

“We’ll have to observe his behaviors very closely,” Melisandre said quietly. “Maybe take notes.”

“He’s not a wild animal, woman. I’m not observing him. We’re just going to put this behind us.”

The phones finally rang, pulling her away from whatever sassy retort she was inevitably going to supply him.

“I’m gonna head out for the day, then. See you in the morning,” he said, tucking the rum into the inner pocket of his coat and gesturing for Beric to follow him out of the house and down the street.

“Do you have a car?” Beric asked.

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

“My place is only two blocks over,” Thoros said dismissively. Living close to work was one of the benefits of King’s Landing; that and the public transit making cars unnecessary. From a legal standpoint, he wasn’t exactly allowed to drive, anyway.

“How does one become a phone psychic, anyway?” Beric asked. “What kind of CV does that require?”

“I used to do tarot readings on a street corner. Then I was a television psychic. But no matter how good you are at a job, if you show up wasted, you end up getting fired. I probably could’ve retired but…I get bored. And do stupid shit.”

Like raise the dead, apparently.

His condo should have been empty. Sandor Clegane worked weird hours, and only lived there in a sort of informal sense of having nowhere else to go because everyone else found him intolerable. His hope was that he wasn’t there, and he’d have time to develop an excuse for why a random guy was moving in.

Luck was just not on his side today.

“Who the fuck is that?” the notoriously ill-tempered roommate in question asked the moment the door to Thoros’s somewhat unkempt condo shut.

“This is Beric,” he said stupidly. “He’s moving in with us.”

“What the fuck? When was I going to hear about this?”

“Right now, I guess?” he shot back, rolling his eyes.

“Why the fuck is he moving in exactly?” Sandor pressed, speaking as though the person in question wasn’t just standing there listening to this exchange.

Thoros and Beric looked at each other, and then back to the tall, scarred up man angrily eating a pint of ice cream on the couch, brandishing a spoon menacingly.

“Because he’s…” Pause. “We’re dating? Very seriously dating.” Was that really the best lie he could come up with? Lord of Light, defend him.

Beric and Sandor were both gawking at him. He pulled the rum out of his coat and made a point to finish the bottle.

“Yup. That’s it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't play drinking games with psychics.

If Sandor didn’t buy the excuse that Thoros was abruptly moving a very serious boyfriend into the condo, he didn’t outright say it. He regarded Beric with hostility, as he did most people, but in the few days he’d been there, nothing had been said directly.

But Thoros knew that Sandor was smart enough to see through it, if given the chance.

So maybe he was kind of enjoying the pretend relationship for the hour or so a day the three of them were in the condo at the same time.

It was the sleeping arrangement where things were liable to fall apart. The condo only had two usable bedrooms, the third barely more than a closet stuffed with remnants of old hobbies and broken pieces of bike.

His instinct of course was the offer the couch, but when Sandor came home from his night job and saw Beric on the couch, his skepticism was palatable. A very serious couple shared a bed, obviously.

So Thoros’s room, where he went to get away from people, was now the living space of a very dissatisfied zombie.

It was worse considering that Beric didn’t seem to need or feel compelled to sleep anymore. It had been a week and Thoros still hadn’t adjusted to waking up in the middle of the night to piss to find his new roommate scrolling through Instagram, barely looking tired.

“So you just don’t feel like sleeping?” he asked, one night, sharing a six pack. He was grateful he sprang for the extra large bed, because they weren’t cramped together when they were sequestered like this. They couldn’t exactly speak openly with Sandor listening, so at night was the only time they got to speak about it.

For the first few days he was content to pretend this was simply a zany scheme without any underlying issues, but his curiosity was getting the better of him.

“Not really, no,” he said. “I feel tired, but when I try to shut my eyes it’s just sort of…like. My body doesn’t shut down?”

Thoros thought about what Melisandre had told him, about taking notes and observing, but he still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of treating Beric like a lab experiment.

“Hm. Do you want to play a drinking game?” he asked, fishing another pack of beer out from under the bed.

“Do you just keep beer under your bed at all times?” Beric asked.

“Let’s not get into the particulars,” he said. “Tyrion Lannister claims he made up this game but honestly, it’s pretty basic. You guess something about me and I’ll drink, I guess something about you, you drink. The one rule is you can’t use anything you’ve been explicitly told as a guess. That’s cheating.” There was a pause as Beric absorbed the instructions with an earnest expression, opening a fresh can and getting ready. “You can go first.”

“Okay. Hm. You’re not from Westeros.”

“That was easy but I’ll take it,” he said, drinking. “I’m from Myr, before you ask. But it’s been a while.”

“You’d rather live in King’s Landing than Myr?” Beric said.

“Yeah, it’s a hellhole outside of the resort you’ve probably visited,” he deadpanned back. “My turn. You’re an only child.”

Beric drank. “You’re the oldest.”

Thoros laughed. “Youngest of seven. Wrong guess means you drink again,” he said.

“You didn’t mention that part when we started,” he complained, though he obediently took his drink. He was much more measured than Thoros was, which made sense, considering the circumstances. “You’re turn then.”

Thoros contemplated him. Honestly, he rarely gave people outside of himself thought outside of work. He spent too much time with his head full of other people’s problems. But he did utilize the gifts to trounce people at drinking games, of course.

“You moved to King’s Landing after a breakup.”

Beric sighed and drank. “Broken engagement. Nothing to do about it.”

“Let’s not relive your past traumas, we might have to talk about how you got stabbed to death a week ago.”

He drank again without it even being his turn, looking uncomfortable at the memory.

Thoros grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

He couldn’t say what Beric’s mental state was at this point. It was difficult to read him, and more difficult as cloudy as he was getting. The more he drank, the quieter his brain was. Did he need to comfort him?

“Guess something funny.”

“You’ve slept with that girl at your office,” Beric said.

“If I have to take a drink for every time, it might take a while,” he said, finishing off the can and opening another.

“So you two are like a thing?”

“God, no. That was ages ago.” He laughed. “She’s much pickier these days.”

Beric finally laughed for a moment. “That’s probably for the best.”

“Now that’s a rude assumption to make,” he said. “I’m quite adept. Though apparently everyone in King’s Landing thinks I’m bad luck.” The game was probably derailed at this point. “And I’d say to that, if people make bad decisions and one of those is sleeping with me, the rest shouldn’t be my fault.”

“How are you bad luck?” he asked. “I mean, we’ve only kissed the one time and I say it worked out for me.”

Thoros snorted, trying to shake off the odd charge in the room. “I mean, I got with some people who then immediately made some poor choices. Like my mate Robert met his terrible ex-wife the same night we…” For once, he decided to be delicate. The details had sort of taken a life of their own after 18 years. “So he blamed me. And it became a thing.”

“What the fuck are you two idiots doing in there?” Sandor asked, opening the door with his foot.

“We could have been naked.”

“And?”

“We were playing a drinking game.”

“You know he’s a psychic, right, kid? Like, he cheats at this game every time,” Sandor pointed out, absolutely ruining the game forever.

Beric threw the nearest pillow at him. “What the hell, man!”

Thoros narrowed his eyes at his roommate. “I was just telling Beric about the time me and you spent the night together. Back when we were younger,” he said, grinning as Clegane colored bright red, clenching his jaw.

“That never happened,” he said, pointing aggressively at Beric before he stomped off, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

“It happened. It was weird,” Thoros corrected. “You think if you get really drunk you’ll fall asleep?” he asked, using a wayward bottle as a projectile to shut the door. Changing the subject would distract him from being mad that Thoros cheated at the game, right?

Pausing, he considered it. “I’m not sure. We can give it a shot,” he said.

Turns out, it took a lot of alcohol to put a zombie to sleep, but eventually they both passed out.


End file.
